NobodyisFlyingthePlanehttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com
We're all on the same plane, but there's no pilot!Mon, 05 Mar 2018 20:07:03 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/d3f26591181b04769a82b3c3cb6eb019?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngNobodyisFlyingthePlanehttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com
The Real Reason the Investor Class Hates Pensionshttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-real-reason-the-investor-class-hates-pensions/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-real-reason-the-investor-class-hates-pensions/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2018 20:06:53 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-real-reason-the-investor-class-hates-pensions/Pensions are under attack. The goals are twofold. Increase profits for financial companies and reduce the economic power of sharholders.

If the Kochs and their allies succeed in smashing and scattering these last remaining pension funds into millions of 401(k)s, they will do more than just undermine the retirement security of millions of Americans. They will silence their economic voice. The pension reform drive should be understood, at least in part, as a campaign of economic voter suppression. And it is coming, soon, to a jurisdiction near you, if it isn’t there already.

Take us down — all those cringing provincials who still think climate change is a hoax, that being transgender is a fad or that “socialism” means purges and re-education camps. Rid the world of all our outmoded opinions, vestigial prejudices and rotten institutions. Gender roles as disfiguring as foot-binding, the moribund and vampiric two-party system, the savage theology of capitalism — rip it all to the ground. I for one can’t wait till we’re gone. I just wish I could live to see the world without us.

]]>https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/go-ahead-millennials-destroy-us/feed/0nobodyisflyingtheplaneTechnology is designed to bring out the worst in ushttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/how-technology-is-designed-to-bring-out-the-worst-in-us-vox/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/how-technology-is-designed-to-bring-out-the-worst-in-us-vox/#respondSat, 24 Feb 2018 20:31:28 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/how-technology-is-designed-to-bring-out-the-worst-in-us-vox/Techmology ain’t your friend. We need more vigilance over what our lovely new tech toys are doing to us.

There must be better ways to design the tools we need and use. Perhaps the Center for Humane Technology has some ideas.

Silicon Valley is reckoning with having had a bad philosophical operating system. People in tech will say, “You told me, when I asked you what you wanted, that you wanted to go to the gym. That’s what you said. But then I handed you a box of doughnuts and you went for the doughnuts, so that must be what you really wanted.” The Facebook folks, that’s literally what they think. We offer people this other stuff, but then they always go for the outrage, or the autoplaying video, and that must be people’s most true preference.

I think the [traffic] metrics have created this whole illusion that what people are doing is what people want, when it’s really just what works in the moment, in that situation.

]]>https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/how-technology-is-designed-to-bring-out-the-worst-in-us-vox/feed/0nobodyisflyingtheplaneA Move Toward More Local Political Powerhttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/a-move-toward-more-local-political-power/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/a-move-toward-more-local-political-power/#respondMon, 19 Feb 2018 21:36:33 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/a-move-toward-more-local-political-power/Richard Florida has been leading a new understanding of what makes urban places great and how we can harness the innovation and economic success that comes from our cities.

His thoughts on the 2016 election lead him to see a looming decentralization of political power. It sounds good to the staff here, but we wonder how it plays out in situations such as when red country pollution seeps into blue cities.

the internet companies that sold ads to Russians over the past few years can voluntarily adopt the Honest Ads Act’s provisions. They’ve taken some steps in that direction, but there is certainly more they could do.

]]>https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/russian-election-interference-is-far-from-over-i-asked-9-experts-how-to-stop-it-vox/feed/0nobodyisflyingtheplane‘Right to Remain’ Needed to Keep Housing Redevelopment Equitablehttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/right-to-remain-needed-to-keep-housing-redevelopment-equitable/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/right-to-remain-needed-to-keep-housing-redevelopment-equitable/#respondTue, 13 Feb 2018 20:10:31 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/right-to-remain-needed-to-keep-housing-redevelopment-equitable/More housing is needed in most communities experience rapid increases in housing costs. To some extent displacement is a problematic consequence of denser redevelopment. Right to Remain provisions could incentivize developers to keep displaced renters in the neighborhood while replacement housing is built. This would go a long way to reducing the effects of displacement.

Right to Remain could fit into state or local law in a number of ways — but it would be most effective to pair it with upzoning (zone changes that allow for denser housing to be built). Rent is rising in Los Angeles because we build far too little housing to accommodate our children and the job-seekers who move here. That resulting housing shortage gives landlords all the negotiating power. Upzoning allows more housing to be built, giving renters more options — and therefore more leverage with landlords. In combination with the Right to Remain, upzoning can provide enough housing to bring rents down while making sure that no one is displaced along the way.

Given this history, it is not surprising that the contemporary leaders of the religious right are blasé about reports that Trump cheated on his third wife with a porn star shortly after the birth of his youngest child, then paid her to be quiet. Despite his louche personal life, Trump, the racist patriarch promising cultural revenge, doesn’t threaten the religious right’s traditional values. He embodies them.

the politicized sectors of conservative evangelicalism have been associated with bigotry, selfishness and deception for a long time. Trump has simply revealed the movement’s priorities. It values the preservation of traditional racial and sexual hierarchies over fuzzier notions of wholesomeness.

But it seems absurd to ask secular people to respect the religious right’s beliefs about sex and marriage — and thus tolerate a degree of anti-gay discrimination — while the movement’s leaders treat their own sexual standards as flexible and conditional. Christian conservatives may believe strongly in their own righteousness. But from the outside, it looks as if their movement was never really about morality at all.

]]>https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/of-course-the-christian-right-supports-trump/feed/0nobodyisflyingtheplaneU.S. Could End Homelessness With Money Used To Buy Christmas Decorationshttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/u-s-could-end-homelessness-with-money-used-to-buy-christmas-decorations/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/u-s-could-end-homelessness-with-money-used-to-buy-christmas-decorations/#respondMon, 22 Jan 2018 20:52:20 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/u-s-could-end-homelessness-with-money-used-to-buy-christmas-decorations/$20 Billion in funding could end homelessness in the US. That’s about what we spend on Christmas decorations every year. The link has a great info graphic showing places we might find that funding.

The figures are 5 years old, but the more important part is that it might not be as hard to find the funding as some would think.

]]>https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/u-s-could-end-homelessness-with-money-used-to-buy-christmas-decorations/feed/0nobodyisflyingtheplaneSan Francisco or Mumbai? UN envoy encounters homeless life in Californiahttps://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/san-francisco-or-mumbai-un-envoy-encounters-homeless-life-in-california/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/san-francisco-or-mumbai-un-envoy-encounters-homeless-life-in-california/#respondMon, 22 Jan 2018 20:45:46 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/san-francisco-or-mumbai-un-envoy-encounters-homeless-life-in-california/The Guardian looks at homelessness in the U.S. as a human rights issue. Of course it is, it’s spelled out in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The problem, as with many other human rights, is policy and funding are needed to make it so.

What the article seems to miss is that shelter alone will not keep most people experiencing homelessness off the street. Lots of other wrap around services are needed to help stabilize them.

Our staff here would like to see us judge our success as a society not by the Dow, but by how those in the greatest need are treated.

]]>https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/san-francisco-or-mumbai-un-envoy-encounters-homeless-life-in-california/feed/0nobodyisflyingtheplaneIt’s Not a Government Shutdown. It’s a Right-Wing Coup.https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/its-not-a-government-shutdown-its-a-right-wing-coup/
https://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/its-not-a-government-shutdown-its-a-right-wing-coup/#respondSun, 21 Jan 2018 18:22:15 +0000http://nobodyisflyingtheplane.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/its-not-a-government-shutdown-its-a-right-wing-coup/Government Shutdowns as tools of negotiation aren’t an unbiased across the board suspension of government services. They are #Selectivestarvation

The essential services kept going are ones designed to favor the GOP and their law and order model of government, while social services such as food and healthcare for the poor are suspended.

In principle, the criteria of what is and isn’t “essential” is determined by unelected agency and department heads using guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget based on a Department of Justice opinion authored in 1980 by then–Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. That determination,according toMcClatchy, defines “essential” activities as those that “protect life and property”—a fundamentally reactionary (and curiously unexamined) criterion that elevates property over justice, feeding people, and protecting the vulnerable.

When Congress passed laws over the past decades to feed the poor, educate people, and create public spaces, it didn’t mark these efforts as “nonessential.” This distinction is simply an extra-legal assertion by the government that’s been mindlessly accepted by the media and internalized by the broader public. But what is and isn’t “essential” isn’t a determination made by some objective bureaucrat simply calling balls and strikes; it’s the entire framework for how this right-wing administration and Congress will remake government in its image—all without input from the public.

There’s the broader ideological coup as well. As Michael ZuckermannotedinThe Atlanticin 2013, by calling it a “government shutdown” the left runs the risks that many Americans will not notice their lives change in a clear way as the months roll on. The ROI, or “return on investment,” of liberal government–education, science, children’s health–are not noticeable in an immediate and demonstrable way. Each day the “government shutdown” rolls on is another day the far right achieves another propaganda victory by giving the public the impression that government must not be very important if its wholesale closure has no impact on people’s lives.